Westminster Council Wants to Buy Back Shirley Porter Homes
jamesmalexander Fri Aug 24, 2007 at 10:41:09 AM GMT 
Facebook
In the 1980’s Dame Shirley Porter was once leader of Wesminster City Council. She sold off a lot of the Council’s housing stock at a reduced rate thinking home owners would vote Tory. This became known as the “homes for votes” scandal. Today Westminster Council are trying to BUY BACK this stock.
Westminster City Council has asked owners of 6,000 ex-council properties whether they want to sell, in an attempt to ease its housing shortage. The council is saying that the £49m scheme could save it £500,000 per year in temporary accommodation fees.
Thatcher's government introduced the right-to-buy programme in 1980 and this lead to the amount of social housing in the country to plummet. This policy is partly to blame for housing crises in many of our inner cities.
The average person who took up Thatcher’s right to buy in Westminster has made £300,000 minus the price they paid in profit.
A Westminster City Council spokesman said: "We are buying back homes that we owned in the first place. The right-to-buy scheme was a national scheme in which local authorities were obliged to take part. Which sounds like they are blaming Thatcher. They added, "That was a long time ago. We are having to deal with housing problems in the 21st Century."
Dame Shirley was ordered to pay a £27m surcharge for misconduct following exposure of the scandal. The disgraced ex-council leader subsequently spent 12 years in exile in Israel. Yet no criminal charges were brought against her.
In 2004 Westminster City Council accepted £12.3m settlement from Dame Shirley. Sounds like dirty money to me. For the full story please click here.
More recently, when the Tories took control of Hammersmith and Fulham Council, they reduced the number of affordable homes for a new development. Ken Livingstone said it was scandalous" and it had the “stench of Shirley Porter's regime at Westminster Council in the 1980s." Is Stephen Greenhalgh, the Leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Council, the new Shirley Porter? For the more details on this, please click here.
Please visit my website, www.time-4-change.org.uk.
Thatcher's government introduced the right-to-buy programme in 1980 and this lead to the amount of social housing in the country to plummet. This policy is partly to blame for housing crises in many of our inner cities.
The average person who took up Thatcher’s right to buy in Westminster has made £300,000 minus the price they paid in profit.
A Westminster City Council spokesman said: "We are buying back homes that we owned in the first place. The right-to-buy scheme was a national scheme in which local authorities were obliged to take part. Which sounds like they are blaming Thatcher. They added, "That was a long time ago. We are having to deal with housing problems in the 21st Century."
Dame Shirley was ordered to pay a £27m surcharge for misconduct following exposure of the scandal. The disgraced ex-council leader subsequently spent 12 years in exile in Israel. Yet no criminal charges were brought against her.
In 2004 Westminster City Council accepted £12.3m settlement from Dame Shirley. Sounds like dirty money to me. For the full story please click here.
More recently, when the Tories took control of Hammersmith and Fulham Council, they reduced the number of affordable homes for a new development. Ken Livingstone said it was scandalous" and it had the “stench of Shirley Porter's regime at Westminster Council in the 1980s." Is Stephen Greenhalgh, the Leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Council, the new Shirley Porter? For the more details on this, please click here.
Please visit my website, www.time-4-change.org.uk.
Westminster Council Wants to Buy Back Shirley Porter Homes | 0 comments ( topical)
